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Bram Sugarman

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23
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2017-10-04
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2017-10-04
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1
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  1. “These founders were individuals who had built several companies and really had a great, including e-commerce companies and had great empathy for what our merchants were going through and really wanted to solve a hard problem for them. Bram, as I said, I had so many good things from Boris. It was such a pleasure to have you on the show and I look very forward to seeing Neik.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Companies, big Nike, or even Shopify are overnight successes, but understanding just exactly how that journey goes up and down throughout that phase is a really incredible story to learn about. What's the hardest element in your day-to-day role at Shopify? If I had a magic wand, what could I help you with? I would definitely say the hardest element is focusing. We had so many incredible opportunities in building our platform and really accelerating the incredibly ambitious product roadmap that we have, just focusing on the right key areas is definitely the hardest day-to-day challenge. Most recent acquisition and why you said yes publicly announced this is. The most briefing acquisition is a company called Obrillo that does product sourcing. And so the reasons we said yes were number one data and we're heavily data driven company. We understand that one of the biggest challenges for our merchants in their path to entrepreneurship is finding new products to sell. The second piece of it was really the vision around what these founders wanted to do with the company and how big that vision truly was. And the third piece of it really was a call.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I think that would definitely be the process. And so if I try and do my best as we start into the process with a founder to explain to them exactly where we are and where things are going. And so just understanding that things really don't happen overnight, long-term relationships matter, as well as the timeline that it takes to actually go from start to finish that first meeting right through to closing an acquisition, what that timeline is and what this distinct phase is within that process is. What's the favorite book and why? I really enjoy learning about people and so I end up reading a lot of biographies. One of my favorite is The Albert Einstein biography by Walter Isaacson. It's a really great marriage of creativity and genius. More recently I had a chance to read the Phil Knight Nike story in Shoog and just thought that that was a terrific storyline in terms of how the entrepreneurial journey really goes over the course of building a great long-term company. Oftentimes individuals think Nike.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Sounds great. Should have known So, one of the things I think I wish I had known is that MA is really lumpy. And what that ultimately means is that it's not a straight. Here's an offer to buy a company and the next day you've joined the company. There's a lot of different paths that you get to throughout that execution process of an M&A that really creates ups and downs that are similar to the typical entrepreneurial journey. play Potentially overrated. Definitely helpful. I would say that we love working with really refined grade BCs because really, and this is especially the case with first-time founders, there are a lot of new elements in the M&A process that are not familiar to entrepreneurs that really they need a good sounding board to truly understand the intricate elements of it.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And one of our core values at Shopify is that we build for the long term that stretches into our MA strategy where we also buy for the long term.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Thinking in this contemplation phase, there's two ways I would say that it should affect the founder's thinking at this phase. And the first is that you should really understand why you're being acquired by this company and why you want to join this company as a founder. And so that should create a really great long-term alignment between the two. I mean, if you're just sort of thinking that this is a great fit for the team and the product and you don't have a long-term alignment with the acquiring company, that's one way to do it. But more strategically, I think it's important to think about the long term. And so the bigger picture is really about how it's structured in your favor to acquire a great piece of a great ROI on your investment, which is really you join the company for the long term. And so rather than just thinking about what's coming to myself, the founder or the employees or the investors at the time that we joined this company, what are the really great things that can happen to us in the long term?”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I think the cultural aspect of it is really understanding what the core mission of the acquiring company is. And I can speak to Shopify, and we're an entrepreneurship company. What that breaks down to is that our culture is really driven by empathy towards the 500,000 plus merchants on our platform. And so that's from a Shopify perspective, who we serve is our merchants, and that is what defines our culture. And what we've seen in every one of the cases that we've done acquisitions is that founders really embody that empathy towards those merchants. As you look at the broader ecosystem of acquirers, it's the same thing. I think that if you're looking at a major enterprise company as an acquirer, understand who their customers are and who your shared customers amongst them and having that same empathy towards those customers. If you're consumer-facing company and you're looking at consumer-facing acquires, it's the exact same thing. Who are the users of that company? Who are the shared users? Who are the new users? And what are the distinct things that you share with those individuals? So that cultural piece is really about understanding what”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Moment in which you want to start building that pipeline, but understand from a product perspective what are the shared challenges and have conversations around those at the right times.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “That's a great piece of feedback, and there should always be incredible lines of communication between not only founders and corp dev dep dep dep dep departments, but also founders and individuals at the company itself. And so that can be anywhere from developer advocates to product individuals or even engineering. And what I'd say the right time in terms of starting to build that pipeline, I wouldn't say that there's a day one, start doing this or once you have launched a product, start doing that. I would say that understand when there's distinct parts of the journey that there are shared learnings. And so what you really want to do is engage individuals within potential acquisition companies in terms of what you're building, what you're learning, and how that applies to them. And so that's the best conversations that you can possibly have with individuals within the company is really, hey, this is what we're working on, this is what we've learned doing that, what are you seeing and doing that? And it's just a two-way street in terms of communication and things that can be helpful on both sides. And so I don't think there's a distance.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, you know, I would say that there are three things that we see as the core tenets of that. And the first is making sure early on in the acquisition process, this is even pre-LOI or pre-execution phase, that there's a distinct shared vision between the two companies. The places where you get into a little bit of trouble is where there's not great communication or one, the acquirer or the coirry believes that there's certain aspects that are going to go one way and then once you get into the post acquisition integration phase, if that's not the way that it was. We believe in complete open honesty and transparency with the companies and founders that we work with, and we want to make sure that that vision is completely aligned. The second piece of it that I would say is that entrepreneurs should ask lots of questions. That leads back to the first point in terms of having that shared vision and maybe not leaving so much up to, I would say, almost chance in that respect. And the third thing I would say is that planning and executing”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “One of the core pieces of our MA process is that we want the individuals on the company joining Shopify to have a better job day one than they did at their last day as an independent company. And that can come in a lot of flavors. And so really what we want to do is set everyone up for success in the areas that they are best at working on and take away all the challenges or the things that don't align with what they do on a day-to-day basis. And so the ideal post-acquisition integration really is incredibly smooth. I'd say that it doesn't even seem like they're lost or in a new company. And really what they've done is they continue on with the great job that they're doing and focusing on the areas that they're best at while we take over building a great team around them to take on all the challenges.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Optionality. Second best way is by having great funders behind you who are willing to really take this to the long term. The third is through M&A and really just that as a piece of the optionality is always a great thing to have in mind, especially when you find a great partner who's highly aligned in what your world vision is.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, I think that there often is some revenue. And so, what I would say is I would break that price sensitivity into two different pieces. The first is opportunity, which is something that we really assess as a company, and we believe there are massive opportunities that we really target from an M&A perspective in terms of accelerating our product roadmap. And so as we look out, there are also smaller opportunities, and that'll affect the price sensitivity. Those are more feature type of things. But as you look at major opportunities that have the chance, really, to build out a unique business unit within Shopify, that's how we define the opportunity and where price sensitivity can really be expanded when we see a massive opportunity. The second piece of that really is optionality. And so when you think of startups, one of the pieces of advice I give to all founders is build a great business. You can always keep yourself in a great situation once you have optionality. And optionality can come in one of three favors. That could be a sustainable business that's highly profitable. That's the best way to build.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Actually, the team in San Francisco was a product acquisition. It was an incredible team out in San Francisco called Kit CRM, which was building a text-based interface to simplify a merchant experience. Their core initial offering was around simple marketing simplification. That was actually a product category that falls into the product roadmap acceleration piece of our strategy. And it just so happened that they had been in San Francisco. We had been searching around to where our next geography might be in North America and just found this great team with a great product be all building a great strategy for our merchants and decided to acquire them and keep that as our San Francisco office.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Founders make the best long term leaders within the company, and what we want to have is all founders who have opportunities and distinct paths to go down an opportunity to join Shopify to become incredible leaders. It's one of, you know, I would say one of the core building blocks that we have in terms of our M&A strategy is that we understand having being an entrepreneurship company and being founder-led, we understand that there are incredible challenges in building a long-term sustainable company and that not every startup has that opportunity. We want to be a place where founders find an incredible home to build a huge business within this great company.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “We find aqua hires to be incredibly attractive. When it's actually one of the things we've done the most and we find that it comes in two different categories. The first that we've had a lot of success with is that we've found a number of agencies that have been local to the geographies that we operate in to join Shopify. And generally what we found is that there's great product and technology teams at these agencies who are not building long-term products that they're passionate about. They're working for incredible customers and building really unique innovative products, but really they want to sink their teeth into products that they own for the long term. And so there's a number of acquisitions that Shopify has done that has really been aligned with great agencies building credible products for third parties and bringing them in-house to make them leaders within Shopify and own distinct product categories. The second piece of it really is aqua hires on the product side of things. And what we find with Aqua Hires is that what we're really looking for are incredibly strong leaders. We find that”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, it's a good parallel. Having come from the VC background, so it's structured in a very similar way, we have an individual who I work with who would sort of be the partner on the transaction really pushing and championing what we call a champion of the deal, pushing it through the company and pushing it through the various pieces of the decision making process. RIC equivalent would be our executive team. And so once myself as well as the deal champion have an opportunity to really do the full due diligence and understand that this is an incredible opportunity that we want to look at, we will present the full investment or acquisition thesis really into the executive team who will give us the full support to move forward.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Great question. One of the things that I do is I work very closely alongside a single individual who's looking to accelerate their product roadmap within the company on the product or one of our executive teams. And so once we've sort of identified a target group, gain conviction is really about understanding the company, the product, and the founders of that company and bringing them into the Shopify fold. And so really as we build not only the business case, but more importantly, a cultural alignment as well as product alignment and vision alignment conviction, I don't want to say it becomes easy, but it becomes”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Say it's really collaborative. And so I spend a lot of my time actually discussing all those products than what the market opportunities are and some of them obviously are much long-term opportunities and some of them are a little bit more short-term. And so it's really a great conversation and assessment from a product team perspective in terms of how the direction we're taking and how big those opportunities are. And so really the product team drives their own roadmap. I get the privilege of sitting down with them once a quarter or once a month and learning what those priorities are, working off of their priorities to understand where to focus our time as it relates to M&A and that product roadmap.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “That's exactly right here. It's a really exciting opportunity here for us at Shopify where we look out and say we are a hugely ambitious company and we have a lot of product and a lot of new opportunities that we're really trying to capture really quickly and our resources are incredibly constrained. We have a large company building at a really high pace and one of the things that we are really excited about is just building all those products faster and M&A allows us the opportunity to really accelerate a lot of what we're doing. And so what that means at a low level is I spend the majority of my time working with our product team and understanding what that roadmap looks like for the next one, two, three, five, ten years and we have an opportunity to look at each area and find out which of those specifically can be great candidates for M&A to bring in great founders, great teams and great products to really accelerate exactly what we're trying to build which is empowering entrepreneurs through software.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “The opportunity to make the investment got to know a lot of the management team and the founders pretty closely. So right around the time the IPO actually a little bit right after, Harley, who I know you've spoken to on this podcast, called me up and said, hey, you know, we're thinking a lot more about how we can use M&A to expand the company and really accelerate the product roadmap that we're trying to build out. Would you like to come and lead that effort here? And it was incredible opportunity, one of those things that as I look back in my role and venture was one of the most privileged things I had an opportunity to do was look into the ecosystem of startups and understand where the best opportunities were in Shopify, which is just such an incredible opportunity for me and personally just loved the mission of spreading entrepreneurship and taking the path at least to more entrepreneurs.”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “School, I really wanted to embed myself a lot more in the exploding Toronto startup ecosystem. And so I had an opportunity to join a really early stage venture capital fund called Extreme Venture Partners doing a lot of incredible seed investing here in Toronto and spent a whole year working with them to explore new opportunities as well as manage some of the portfolio companies. As I finish that, I love my experience in VC and had an opportunity to meet an individual whose mentor of mine who was starting up a venture capital direct invest arm of a major pension fund here in Canada called Omers Ventures was part of a $72 billion pension fund making direct investments into the startup world and joined that team as it started out in 2011 and had an opportunity over the following four years to make 25 or so investments work directly with six of our portfolio companies, one of which was actually Shopify and had this incredible experience funny enough chasing Shopify in order to make an investment in the company and then finally in 2013 when the fund had”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, absolutely. So, my background as a software engineer, and I started my career working actually in video games, and I had started programming when I was in high school and playing a lot of video games at that time, the most applicable thing to me was using software to build great video games. And so when I finished my undergraduate degree, I went and worked at EAA Electronic Arts and built about four titles there and had an amazing time. And while I was there, there was an incredible sort of boom in the startup world. And this was right around the time of Web 2.0. And so there was a number of amazing companies being built, a lot of amazing entrepreneurs coming out of that. And that really got me excited about the startup world. As I looked around, I really wanted to broaden my horizons. And so I decided to go back to business school, which was a really great environment for me to learn in an academic place. But a lot of the things I had never done. As a computer scientist, I had never learned anything about accounting or finance or economics or marketing. And so learned a lot about that stuff and how it applied to the startup world. And as I entered my second year in school,”

    2017-10-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Key Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask in M&A's, Why Acquihires Come In 2 Different Categories & Why M&A Is Lumpy with Bram Sugarman, Director of Corporate Development @ Shopify · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source